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Brady vs Bray

American parents have registered 98,908 Bradys since 1880, against 808 Brays. Brady is still ahead, with 1,123 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Brady against Bray, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Brady Bray

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Brady has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1883 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2024, when Brady had 1,144 and Bray had 51.

Side by side

  Brady Bray
Total US births 98,908808
Most in one year 5,01551
Babies in 2025 1,12346
Estimated living today 94,000800
Median age today 2011
Peak year 20072024
Best rank 93rd boys2,789th boys
Rank in 2025 321st2,765th
First recorded 18831970
Girls / boys 2,138 / 96,77061 / 747

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Bradys alive today are over 20; half the Brays are over 11. That is 9 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Brady Bray
England and Wales 865206
Scotland 1204

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Brady and Bray.